


light carries on

by jamesjoyce



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:41:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesjoyce/pseuds/jamesjoyce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow Bellamy had entered her bloodstream without her realizing it, incubating until one day he burst inside of her like a virus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	light carries on

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monkkeyslut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkkeyslut/gifts).



> happy birthday morgan, i love you so much. thank you for being born, i would be truly lost without you.

The blood stays underneath her fingernails for days. 

Back when Clarke was younger and less weary she used to imagine blood on her hands. She’d spend hours scrubbing them in every river and creek that she came upon, asking for salvation. Asking to stop seeing red, to stop hearing the dead whisper in the trees. 

There’s no room in her for that now. The blood under her nails is dried and brown; her fingers are successfully stained now. Clarke knows that, with time, the blood will fade or flake away. But she, and what’s left of the people she chose to protect, will stay. 

That’s what all of this was done for, after all. For them. For her. To keep living, keep surviving. So she will. 

 

Clarke spends most of the time that she has now healing. The wars are over, and her people live in peace. She is still a leader, but things are easier now. For the most part she bandages scrapes, and gives children hardened honey to suck on when they receive treatment without crying too much. 

She’s learned how to be content with that. After so many years of fighting, there is a part of her that finds that she doesn’t know what to do now that her first priority isn’t survival. There are days when she feels restless, unsettled in her own skin. 

When she feels like this, Clarke finds herself taking walks in the woods. Every time she’s there she remembers the joy she felt the first time she had ever walked in them, so many years ago, with Finn and Octavia and Monty and Jasper. None of them are the people they were, and they no longer go into the woods alone without a weapon, but if she closes her eyes she can almost taste the split second of joy before reality had crashed down around them. 

Clarke knows she’ll never find that innocence again, but sometimes, with the green of the trees surrounding her, she likes to think that she can try. 

Most of the time when she goes on her walks she’s left alone. People know better than to try to share this time with her--she’s turned them away more than once. Either that or they can’t find her among the foliage, and she’s grateful for that too. 

But if anyone comes for her, it’s Bellamy. 

Bellamy Blake, who took her burdens like they were his own; who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and still managed to keep walking, to keep adding more weight. Clarke admires him for that more than anything. Even when things were at their worst he stayed. He always stayed. 

“It’s funny,” he says one day after he had joined her. They’d walked along the riverbank for miles, before putting their feet into the water, tempting fate but keeping cool all at once. “Even after everything, it feels like this place hasn’t changed at all.” 

Clarke looks at the world around her, feels the water at her toes and the knowledge that somewhere in the water there were creatures that would like nothing better than to eat her, and considers that. Earth is beautiful; Clarke has never forgotten that. Everything surrounding her had been forced to fight on--through disaster and ruin and nuclear waste. Some things might have died, but more had lived. That was what mattered now. The living.

She picks up damp dirt and lets it fall through her fingers as she considers this. “Earth is forever,” Clarke says finally. 

She likes to think that they are too. 

 

Clarke knows that she loves Bellamy. 

She has loved a lot of people in her life: Wells, Finn, Lexa, Raven. The list goes on. Clarke loves fiercely, and with everything that she has. She knows this, and she keeps loving them long after they have broken her heart. She carries around people that she has lost, but they aren’t burdens. Instead they are with her, for always. 

Loving each of them was different, because they were all different. With Bellamy she hardly recognizes the feelings of love inside of herself. Somehow Bellamy had entered her bloodstream without her realizing it, incubating until one day he burst inside of her like a virus.

Clarke realizes she loves Bellamy one day at Camp Jaha’s monthly meetings. She’s sitting beside him as he talks. Even with his face sweaty and his clothes dirty from helping in the fields, he still can take charge of a room like royalty. Bellamy is more the face of the camp now that they’re older. He still consults her about every decision, and she always stands by his side, but Bellamy was made for this. She just wants to spend the rest of her days in peace. 

The moment of realization is a dazzling one, because Bellamy had been smiling at something Monty had said when her heart gave a faint _ba-thump_. She had felt this before, but had never recognized it for what it was. Bellamy so rarely smiled now, but when he did it was always beautiful. His smile had changed over time--from smug and sanctimonious to genuine and wide--but it was always bright. That never wavered. 

_I love Bellamy,_ she thinks, and that’s all she needs. 

 

Clarke tells Bellamy that she loves him on a clear night, sitting around a fire. He had put a blanket around both of them to fend off the deep bone chill of an autumn night creeping towards winter. That and the fire--and Bellamy’s presence--had made her warm. 

The stars are beautiful, and Clarke thinks that it’s amazing that they had been one of them, once. Sitting down here on the earth makes that feel light years away. 

This feeling between her and Bellamy wouldn’t exist if they had stayed in the sky. Clarke moves closer to him to get rid of the dread that chokes her at the thought. She couldn’t imagine life without him now. Even before she had loved him she couldn’t have imagined that. Somehow, during all of the fighting and the journeys they took, he had become a part of her, just like she’d become a part of him. 

“Bellamy,” Clarke says, and he turns to look at her. His gaze goes from questioning to soft in a moment, and that’s how Clarke knows that he loves her too. It’s that knowledge that gives her the desire to kiss him, and so she does, soft and closed mouthed. 

“Clarke, I-” Bellamy starts, but she squeezes his wrist instead of letting him talk. She feels the soft beat of his pulse-- _ba-thump_ \--underneath her fingers. The slight panic in his eyes dies some. 

“Don’t worry, I know,” Clarke says, and then she smiles and moves closer to him. Feels his body as more than just a healer, and now as a person. His heart beats in rhythm with hers, and that’s enough. They don’t need words anymore, not after everything they’ve done, not after everything they’ve become. 

The earth is eternal, and so are they.


End file.
